A place to pause and reflect
A New Government
The last few of years have seen a heightened degree of interest at a global level around many national elections aligned with increasing disillusion with the establishment. Last weekend, here in Australia it was our turn.
Although it may appear that we just changed horses, and many feel quite concerned about the outcome, a couple of days before the election I felt that peace beyond understanding creep over me. Exploring what this meant I sensed God saying that the outcome of the voting was largely inconsequential in comparison to what He is doing.
Musing over this alongside my observations of various groups lobbying for this right and that, or for laws to be changed or repealed, I have questioned my involvement and the importance of our activity in these arenas. My journey through these thoughts has taken a few twists and turns, however and I have landed with a quite different perspective. Rather than trying to change our earthly governments directly, I see the concept of what it means for us, as Christians, to rule and reign with Jesus here on earth as being far more important.
I have long felt that simply changing laws to be more in line with “Christian values” only delays the inevitable as society has continued on its merry, progressive way, leaving behind faith and the fear of the Lord as outdated and irrelevant. The law tries to transform from the outside in, but to my mind, what is far more necessary and effective for the transformation of our society is the transformation of our hearts. Indeed, with transformed hearts, laws mostly become irrelevant. As Paul said, in Romans 8:10, “Love does not do harm to a neighbour; therefore love is the fullness of the law.” And hence, my sense that who is governing is irrelevant in many aspects.
The point is, as I have discussed previously, while we operate out of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, right and wrong or judgement, we can never truly love each other. It will always come back to self interest, to blame and to death and destruction. For all our Christian faith,
if we have not learned to live out of the law of love, we will never be world changers.
Returning to the idea of governance, I felt a really deep revelation over the weekend that I believe is quintessential to the way ahead. It is a totally different way of fighting, but oh so much more profitable, so much more bang for our buck. In this past season/era, we have done so much of our fighting in the natural realm, which is only really like a bandaid on a shark bite at best to what ails our world - so often completely ineffective.
So how do we fight differently?
Many Christians I know can quite easily quote Ephesians 6:12:
“For our battle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, authorities and powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”
However, in the main, we give every appearance of constantly viewing other people as our enemy, and we behave accordingly. We fight people. We can’t see past the behaviour to the person underneath whom Jesus loves so much He died for them. And He commands us to do likewise.
Love God, love your neighbour as yourself – it is that simple and that hard!
Working out what that love actually looks like probably needs to be on a case-by-case basis, but a good rule of thumb is that our response is patient, is kind, does not does not envy; or parade itself, is not arrogant; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; it bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. It never fails. (1 Corinthians 13, NKJV)
The real clincher for me, though, was realising how we are to rule and reign in this new era. As I have contemplated this for some months now, and seeing God bringing down old structures and ways, I have wondered what the new might look like. Last weekend, I feel I was handed a key.
It is about our dominion over the spiritual realm. However, there is many a caution here. We cannot and must not even try to do this in our own strength or without walking closely with Holy Spirit in the how and when. Equally, though, there are some very easy and clear indicators of what it looks like.
First, there is a sequence to the level of our authority. The primary and most important area of authority we have is one that every person on the planet has, no matter their spiritual state:
Authority over self.
This is so important because if we haven’t learned to take authority here, our authority in other realms can easily be skewed or twisted and cause more damage than good. The enemy of our souls looks for these areas in our life and uses them to his advantage. Having the right order within our BE-ing is equally important: our spirit needs to take command over our soul and flesh/body. My flesh and soul will demand loudly what they want and need for their appeasement, but this is usually out of sync with the law of love, because they tend to put self ahead of others.
The second area of authority is our homes and relationships, especially in relationships such as with our children. We get to say what operates in those arenas without doubt. The only times that this won’t work is when we haven’t taken authority in our own person over the same issue. For example, I can’t expect to take authority over anger, or shame, or condemnation in my home if I don’t take authority over the way I deal with anger, shame or condemnation in myself.
From there, we move out into our community and beyond as we grow in spiritual stature.
But what does it look like? Simply casting out demons is not the answer (remember the idea of cleaning the house and seven worse spirits coming in?) and besides, it can be very dangerous if we fight above the authority God has given us personally.
There is a very simple measure, though, which is extremely powerful. It starts with the fruit of the spirit. As we manifest the fruit of Holy Spirit – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control – these have the power to overcome many other spiritual manifestations.
At times it will require us to lay down our lives, if not physically, definitely emotionally and spiritually. However, as we do, as we cease to respond to negative behaviour and situations in kind, but in the opposite spirit, we first learn to carry the victory of Jesus Christ in ourself, and then on into our communities and beyond. As we respond in Godly ways, we actually start to change the atmosphere around us and rather than increasing the negativity around us, will start to cleanse and bless it for Kingdom of God change.
A great insight into this comes from Roy Godwin (The Grace Outpouring), who has practiced this with amazing results in his local community by simply blessing his community with every good thing. At first, this is very confronting. In our minds, we believe that “bad people” don’t deserve blessing; they deserve punishment. Just like I did or do – I’m not perfect yet! And yet Scripture tells us that it is God’s kindness that leads us to repentance, (Romans 2:4). Not His wrath. So why do we keep looking to wrath and punishment as the answer? It is not our job to judge or meet out judgement or punishment. Our investment in ourselves is far too comprehensive to do it with any measure of justice, let alone the fact that this type of judgement is not what God has meted out to us.
Changing the spiritual atmosphere in our world may seem like a daunting or even impossible task. However, I am seeing more and more clearly that we are only required to step out into this in the degree Holy Spirit asks us to at the time we are asked. Sometimes it might be as simple and helping or encouraging someone in the street. Sometimes it might be singing or humming worship and praise as we go about our daily activities in the world. Other times it might be something more overt, praying for someone, or some activity. Personally, I use the sound of sirens – ambulance or other – as a prompt to pray and speak out life over whatever is going on, be that an accident, illness or other. The challenge is not how much we do, but to start, to do something. It may be a little awkward or uncomfortable at first, but as we learn to operate under Holy Spirit’s guidance, we find that those promptings yield fruit, which further encourages us to take the next step and the next step.
So here is the challenge: What is the next step the Lord is asking you to take in ruling and reigning for the Kingdom of God? Ask Holy Spirit to show you, and then simply step out. I’d love to hear your experiences!
(And if you have questions about what any of this looks like, please ask!)
“For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the greatness of his government and peace there will be no end.” (Is 9:6-7 NIVUK)
If you want to investigate more on this theme, you can purchase a copy of “Untruth: Exploring Truth in a Post-Truth World” on my home page.
Ditch that old wineskin, NOW!
Our beautiful white star magnolia is in full bloom at the moment. As I was enjoying watching it burst into blossom, I noticed one of the flowers was having something of a malfunction. Instead of opening from the middle as usual, the furry bud cover had remained stuck, trapping the petal tips inside (as in the photo). Because my attention was drawn so strongly to this, I asked God what He wanted to tell me about it.
“The old wineskin is about to fall and the pure Bride will be released in spotless glory!”
These were the words that immediately popped into my mind. I know it is mixing metaphors, but my sense was that it is time for the constraints of the past to go, it is time for us - the people of God, both as individuals and corporately - to be fully released into all the potential within us.
Watching this bud over the course of a week, although the petals kept pushing out from the bottom, the furry cap stayed stuck fast. And then, one day I went out and the whole flower was gone! Looking around, I found it on the ground, still stuck in the cap. I was quite dismayed, wondering what it meant, as I was so looking forward to the “bursting forth” and the “breaking free”. I asked the Lord about it again and His response hit me hard.
It was a warning.
If you don’t let go of the old wineskin, not only will you fail to reach your potential, fail to bloom, but you will no longer even be attached to the tree. You will be separated.
Since this, I have been asking the Lord what the old wineskin represents. What am I still holding on to? What to I need to let go of?
As I continued to ponder on the old wineskin, and what it signifies, suddenly I saw a connection with some aspects of identity we have been sitting with over the last few months.
My husband has been a journey through this and we are digging deep into how we walk it. He felt the Lord telling him that he (and we all) need to lay down – even resign from – every identity that we have save one. Every identity except our identity as a child of God. We need to lay every other identity down at the feet of Jesus: parent, spouse, boss, worker, teacher, pastor, sister, brother, friend, whatever roles we play in life in our relationships with others and what we do; whether we are “the funny one”, “the grumpy one”, “the helpless one”, “the wealthy one”, “the accident prone one”, “the perfectionist”, “the spiritual one” or whatever other label we have attached to ourselves, we must let go of all of them. We need to strip ourselves bare of every identity we own or hold on to, everything about us. It is from this place we learn to stand on who we are in Jesus alone*.
To explain further, it reminds me of a season I went through some years back where God asked me to stop doing pretty much everything I was involved in. It was a year of learning to simply be – to find my identity, my value in being in Him rather than in what I did.
It is a tough place.
We live in a society where pretty much the first question we ask a new acquaintance is “What do you do?”. So much of our perceived value (in the eyes of the world particularly) comes from what we do, what we produce – our work(s), what we have to offer. Early on in my journey as a parent, when people asked me what I did, I had to catch myself as I would reply, “I’m just a mum”. Even though I chose to focus on parenting, it reflected back to me that I didn’t really value that role either. I believed what the world told me about it.
The truth is, most of us look to others around us for our validation, to reflect back to us that we are worth something, that what we do has value. It is why our fragile egos flip from feeling great when we get positive reinforcement to feeling despair, hopelessness or worthlessness when the feedback is not so flattering or even absent. This has become much more obvious in this era of social media, where everything we put out into the cyber world is measured through this lens.
However, if we have confidence about our identity in Christ, if we firmly plant our feet on Him as our Rock, everything we do, every role and “identity” that we take up becomes an offering to Him, and is for the building of His Kingdom. It ceases to be about getting our own needs for affirmation and validation met, but is rather an outworking of our assurance in who we are in Him. The mess of our deceitful hearts looking to their own agenda is replaced with a pure heart, pure motives, simply to serve God. And oh, there is such freedom in this place. Our master ceases to be public opinion and becomes the One who loves us unconditionally – not because of what we can do for Him, but because we belong to Him, we are His creation.
At the end of the podcast, there is an opportunity to spend some time with Jesus reflecting on those aspects of our identity that are not grounded in Him. You can do this on your own as well. Ask Him what aspects of your identity you need to lay down at His feet, to give up to Him. He may give them back to you, or may transform them into a new way of being. You can also ask Him what He wants to tell you about your identity in Him – what He loves about you, what He has placed in you – and ask Him what He wants to do through these. He may also ask you to wait until you have walked a while without any identity but as His child.
*If you are having difficulty with understanding what it means to be a child of God, a really helpful book is “Who I am in Christ”, by Neil T Anderson, or you can just look up images with the same information and there are many showing the key verses from Scripture.